The Berchtesgaden Debriefing
by Petronia
Summary: The first story in "Velocity over Time"'s continuity. Crawford and Schuldig's first meeting, against a background of gratuitous death, precocious sexuality and pretentious cinematographic directives.
1. Chapter 1

**The Berchtesgaden Debriefing – Chapter 1**

_The music dies. For a few moments nothing more is heard. At last when the voices break the silence they carry a hollow quality, as of that of a magnetic recording._

_Sound does not bring light. The darkness remains._

_"For the record, state your name. Please speak clearly."_

_"Bradley Emmet Crawford." _

_"Rank?"_

_"Lieutenant."_

_"Affiliation within the Organization?"_

_"Schwarz-neunzehn offensive unit, coordinating officer."_

_"Describe your psi-classification under the Lowell-Sondeheim system."_

_"The Institut identifies me as a tactical precognitive. My post-course psi-rating was level alpha prime."_

_"Thank you; please be seated. Would you prefer that we conduct this session in English, Herr Crawford?"_

_"It is very kind of you. But I am quite at ease in German."_

_"Very well. Now. You have provided the Organization with memoranda detailing your discovery; I have them before me. Your technical observations are rigorous and to be commended. Our purpose today is to complete them with a transcript of the – accompanying chronology, as it were – in order that we may collate the statements of the subject with our knowledge of his past experience. In view of such I must ask you to be as complete as possible, and to respond to questions to the best of your ability."_

_"I understand."_

_"Please proceed then. From the beginning."_

_"My first contact with the subject occurred in October of 1988. My cover at the time was as junior attaché to former Deputy Ambassador Joseph Sutton. As such I had been assigned by the Organization to the investigation of a series of irregular monetary transactions. The corporations involved were – I believe still are – of strategic national importance, but I was given to understand that laundering was suspected beyond the endemic political bribery. I traced the middleman to the social circle of one Mara Eikener, an expensive call-girl and adventuress. I was able to arrange for Deputy Ambassador Sutton to be invited to one of her soirées; of course I attended as well."_

_"This was in Munich."_

_"Yes."_

_"Nearly two and a half years ago. You had only recently joined the Organization, had you not?"_

_"Yes."_

* * *

In October of 1988, he was a slender, earnest-looking young man in glasses a bit wide for his face. His papers gave him out to be a few years older than he actually was, but not so much that he didn't look it. Nepotism being received in diplomatic circles as a matter of course, his credentials did not arouse much curiosity. He was capable in a sober, Ivy-League way, but never so keen that he trod on any toes. In a large social gathering he would stand somewhere out of the way, unnoticed, watchful. His eyes were an arresting gold behind the lenses, and sometimes they would go too far away to follow.

He stood by the bay window of Mara Eikener's glittering salon with a campari in his hand, unnoticed, watchful.

Listening.

"We have an agreement." Muffled footsteps on carpet, the sound of liquid gurgling from a crystal bottleneck. The voice was that of a senior board member of a recently-privatized energy corporation. "One that will not hold if the present import-control policy continues. You must understand that this has become a matter for concern to the entire governing body."

"The changes have been drafted – ratification is merely a formality." Crawford adjusted the tiny receptor in his ear, a gesture much like brushing hair from his face. It was another speaker now, one that he could not identify, but the accent was pure Bavaria. The sound quality was near-impeccable. "Oppenheim will lean on the caucus a little, and it will go through."

"However, the Italian angle..."

"Not problematical. Allow me to reassure you on that front."

Crawford smiled to himself faintly. "The Italian angle," he repeated under his breath. A flash of vision; he had forty-five seconds before the end of the impromptu conference. He drained his glass and slipped into the throng, making for the other side of the room.

A panning view of the party—

An expensively furnished salon, modelled on (or, perhaps, a relic of) those of the nineteenth century, lit warmly by chandeliers and antique lamps. Mirrors multiplied the ruby glow of wine, the glint of crystal and china from a barely-visible dining room. Unseen strings harmonized discreetly in the background. Men and women in evening dress clustered on the settees – smiles exchanged, snippets of business or flirtation half-heard in Crawford's wake – diamonds flashing with an elegant gesture of the hand, a coy tilt of the head. Occasionally there was a burst of merriment, and voices raised in appeal to the hostess of the _soirée._

Crawford followed her with his eyes briefly. She was beautiful, this _Fräulein_ Eikener: perfect long-limbed blondness in a gossamer-rose evening gown. She moved from guest to guest, letting witty words and playful glances drop in her path like pearls from a broken choker, making sure glasses stayed three-quarters filled. An exquisite hostess. Most of the men were prominent in the business world, some were writers or musicians to complete the party, and a great number – he could tell – were in love with her to some extent. Wistfully, flirtatiously, adoringly, hopelessly... By two in the morning they would be gently encouraged to take their leave, and the luckiest from among them would be allowed to pay for her undivided attention. Crawford had yet to see who she would choose that night.

It was entirely charming, in a purposefully old-fashioned way. Crawford thought of the Japanese and their geisha dolls. At least Sutton seemed to be enjoying himself: Crawford could hear him holding forth on his _choyé_ Mahler from beside the mantelpiece, cigar no doubt in hand. The subject could last the ambassador hours.

He passed the two men at the door to the salon.

The energy corporation board member gave him a vague smile of greeting, acknowledging recognition. "_Herr_ Crawford." Crawford inclined his head in return. As the second man brushed past him he shifted the watch on his left wrist, apparently as an adjustment. (One of the pins that held the strap was pressure-sensitive; a quick shutter gave him two three-quarter views and a profile for the SS database to collate.) Then he was in the dimness of the corridor, and away from the crowd.

The dining room lay across the corridor; kitty-corner from the stairs was a small study, furnished in Art Deco style. Crawford had been in this room not forty minutes ago, when his talent had informed him of the interest of the scene about to occur. He stepped around a lacquered Chinese folding screen, felt along the bottom edge of the desk that adjoined it – and his fingers encountered the minitape deck and microphone he had previously taped there, still recording soundlessly.

He smiled again as he detached the electronics set-up from the polished wood. The tape it contained would be enough for a criminal conviction. Of course, there would be no appeal made to common justice, unless one of the officials involved proved obdurate. Then the evidence in his hand might very well find its way into police custody. But SS's interest lay in subtle leverage and arcane influence, in power too diffuse to pinpoint and too pervasive to escape. The moves it made were riddles; the deaths it caused, enigma. Crawford carried a gun under SS's aegis even then, and did not question its use. No, there would be no police involved.

There might be assassinations, however.

He slipped from behind the screen, settled his dinner jacket on his shoulders, and stepped out of the study.

That was when—

* * *

_A click, probably a Bic lighter. The darkness of the senses lifts somewhat. The soundtrack includes, now, the muted whirring of a tape deck; the scrape of a chair as its occupant straightens. The same voice says, "you mean it was a probe."_

_"Not exactly. Controlled contact, certainly, but in all other respects... a crude approximation. Primitive..."_

_"Untrained."_

_"Yes."_

_"You recognized it immediately."_

_"I was shielded. I did some work with empaths during my course of study at the Institut. I was specifically trained to differentiate—"_

_"Yes, I understand." Paper rustles. The wilful obscurity retreats further: there is a desk on which they are piled, an edgeless surface of polished gleaming wood. There is a taste of cigarettes to the air. "You shield yourself as a matter of course?"_

_"To a basic extent, yes. It serves to reinforce my training. The exercise of my talent is dependent upon rigorous control if it is to be of appreciable use."_

_"I see. But this still must have been unexpected."_

_"It was."_

* * *

The wall at his back brought him up short. Crawford took a measured breath, centering himself, but did not lower his gun. His gaze flickered from side to side, searching for the intrusion's source: found nothing.

"Come out where I can see you," he said aloud. "I know you're there."

Laughter. Laughter without sound – and a vision flared in his mind, the image as bright and diffuse as fire.

Crawford lowered his gun slowly.

The corridor was dim, cluttered and shadowed by bric-á-brac from the last century: bibelot tables, statuary, rhododendron fronds overhanging the nacred lip of a Chinese vase. Mara Eikener was a connoisseur, or at the very least a collector. (An heiress? Many times over, perhaps.) The only illumination came from the chandeliers beyond the half-ajar doorway. Crawford could hear snatches of laughter from the salon, conversation... He waited, shuttering his sensorium within himself as he'd been taught, but the teasing touch did not return. There was only the low steady ticking of a clock from the study behind him, and a similarly nagging sensation of presence. Seconds passed.

Was he mistaken? Unless he'd startled off whomever it was. Crawford had a hair-trigger reaction to mental interference – he would have endangered his cover, he realised suddenly, had there been witnesses at hand. Perhaps he'd done so already. A non-psi would never have noticed the contact.

Yet the vision—

A glint of light.

Telltale, eye-catching in the penumbra, near the floor beneath one of the ubiquitous lacquer folding screens. Crawford stared, keeping his mind carefully empty, and the errant spark resolved itself-

Into spinning gold—

A heart-shaped charm. A chain about a slender white ankle, shadowed behind the panel's base.

Crawford took several rapid steps and reached into the darkness. There was laughter again, real sound this time, and warm hands caught him by the sleeve and pulled him behind the screen, against a warm slim body.

"You found me," the voice said close to his shoulder. It is a boy-voice, pitched unexpectedly low: mocking, Crawford thought. "Congratulations, _mein Herr._"

* * *

_"Invasive telepathy," the man says. A hand pushes a stapled sheaf of papers across the desk. "Rarely encountered in the field, and never at such an advanced age."_

_"I had only a rough idea of the ramifications at the time." There is light; there had been light all along. Crawford is seated before the desk, posture alert and hands folded before him. He is careful to make eye contact. "I had been taught that it was a relatively rare talent, even within the sub-group of psi communicants."_

_"You didn't attempt Sondeheim's Number Test?"_

_"I wasn't aware there was a distinction to be made. I assumed that I was in the presence of a strong empathetic talent, naturally."_

_"You are conversant with the Dufort and Castegnella cases?"_

_"I've researched them, yes." _

_"At the time?"_

_"No."_

_"Please continue, then."_

* * *

It was a moment before Crawford thought to struggle, and so of course he did not. Instead he brought his other arm up and rested the muzzle of the gun against the base of the other's throat, right over the soft dip between his collarbones. Pulse against cold steel – the top two buttons of his shirt were open.

"No sudden movements," he said, and stepped backward. The – boy, it _was_ a boy – dropped his grip on Crawford's arm as soon as they were clear of the screen, but Crawford continued to retreat until his knees bumped the edge of a _récamier_ pushed up against the opposite wall. His assailant leant back against the curving banister of the stairs, grinning in seeming delight.

"You won't shoot me," he said. "It'd make a mess for you, and I haven't done anything."

"Don't surprise me," Crawford said. "I don't take to it well." _Twelve,_ he thought, and a moment later revised his estimate upward. He was slight, certainly, in the way of a boy who had not reached his growth spurt, but there was something in his face that appended a year or two. _Fourteen._ Very pale. Features that were – irregular, but striking. Triangular face, fine bones, wide mouth. Dressed in a dark, near-military-styled suit that made him look like a pre-war _Gymnasium_ schoolboy, except for the open collar and the gold ankle-bracelet winking over bared feet. Mussy red hair, long enough in front to shadow his eyes. Crawford couldn't be sure in the half-light, but he thought they were green.

Talent said: _not a danger. Not now._

Crawford holstered his weapon abruptly. His mind was working fast.

Only the strongest empaths were capable of conducting active probes. It was a talent that developed young, a world of power away from the proliferation of minor sensitivity during puberty, and the window of opportunity before permanent damage was incurred was short: a few months, a year at best. The Institut sifted through referrals from psychiatric specialists across Europe and North America, racing continuously against time. Crawford had been taken to see the new arrivals as part of his training, so he'd recognize the psi signature in the field. Little girls of eight or nine or ten, in several cases eleven, in one case twelve. That one had retreated into herself by the time she was found; she screamed for hours if a hand was laid on her shoulder.

He'd read up on the more extreme cases in private, after that, and found nothing of use or danger to himself. There were only two accounts of true invasive telepathy verified by the Institut in the twentieth century. Both individuals, it seemed, had been discovered by the age of five; both were severely autistic. The immature nervous system had protected itself as best it could. A breeding program had been contemplated, and abandoned.

A _boy_ of fourteen—

"Thirteen," the boy said. Crawford's reaction must have shown, because he ducked his head with the same soundless laugh; Crawford had thrown up too heavy a shield in that moment to tell whether it carried psychically. "You're... interesting, _Herr_ Bradley Crawford. Usually they think I'm too young, not the opposite."

His name. Crawford kept his breathing even. He'd picked up a number. There had been a diagnostic conducted in the Dufort case... "Usually?"

"When they see me," the boy said. He was still smiling. "A lot of boring people come through here. I don't like them, so I don't talk to them."

"I'm flattered," Crawford said, dry despite the redoubled hum of distrust in the back of his mind. _Empaths can't probe for verbal patterns or deductive logic, only emotional status and occasional sensorium input_ – he adjusted his glasses. "You live here?"

The boy shrugged.

"Does anyone else know that you can—" Crawford paused. A thought had come to him: _he hasn't asked me what I'm doing here._

As if in response, the boy held up a hand, palm forward. In it was Crawford's minitape deck. He'd shoved it in his outside jacket pocket as he'd exited the study.

Crawford dismissed a ridiculous urge to reach for his holster. He adjusted his glasses again instead, not taking his eyes off the boy.

"There's nothing on that you'd be interested in," he said. "It has nothing to do with you." The boy looked unperturbed.

"But you're interested," he said. "Isn't that the point?"

Pause. "What do you intend to do?"

"Give it back to you, I guess." But he did not move. After a moment Crawford took a step toward him – and stopped. The boy only watched him, resting his elbows on the carved wood. His eyes were bright and calculating.

"You want it back, right?" he said. "What do _you_ intend to do?"

Crawford moved quickly. The boy didn't even try to escape: he laughed and half-twisted his body, shielding the tape behind his back. Crawford reached down and gripped his arm, pinning him against the banister.

"Now—" he said.

The boy caught him by the front of his shirt, pulled him close and kissed him.

The unexpected warmth of lips against his own startled Crawford out of his original purpose – and in that moment something instinctive took hold of him, and he responded, leaning into the kiss. The boy's mouth opened to him, moist and willing and unhurried: he tasted like sweet things, without the sweetness itself. Cinnamon, almonds, cardamom. Crawford fancied the scent would cling to the boy's skin as well. The faintest of aftertastes, elusive...

He was falling. It was untenable. His heartbeat was thundering in his ears. He clenched the arm under his fingers, hard, and broke the kiss. The boy's eyes flickered open at that; they were close enough still that his quickened breath feathered teasingly over Crawford's lips. His irises were a catlike blue-green, filling Crawford's unfocussed vision.

"Don't stop," he said.

Crawford opened his mouth and found no name to conjure with. "You—"

The boy turned his head abruptly toward the salon door. "Oh, fuck," he said, and before Crawford had time to react he'd slipped his grip and was darting up the stairs. Halfway to the top he stopped and tossed something at Crawford, who caught it by reflex: the minitape deck.

"I'll see you," he said, and disappeared into second-storey darkness. Crawford glimpsed a flash of gold and started forward unthinkingly, then stopped with his hand on the banister. _A child,_ he told himself incredulously, _a child._ And following hard upon, _the Organization would..._ Possibilities gripped at him, vertiginous.

"_Herr_ Crawford?"

He turned.

In the statement that he would submit to his liaison officer later that week, Crawford would make no mention of what he saw next. It was his practice to omit all such visions from his reports. Mara Eikener stood in the rectangle of light cast by the salon door, one hand poised on the jamb. Blood matted her blond hair, pasting it to the crushed side of her skull, trickling in obscenely bright rivulets down the curve of her throat. The pink chiffon of her gown was soaked all down the front with it. Her eyes were unblinking glass; Crawford caught a glimpse of bone through the clotted mess as she tilted her head inquiringly at him.

He closed his eyes before he could see her smile.

"_Botschafter_ Sutton is asking for you," he heard her say. And then, "are you quite all right, _Herr_ Crawford? You—"

"Yes," he said. "Yes, I'm fine." He steadied himself before opening his eyes again, but the vision had passed. _Fräulein_ Eikener stood pristine and breathing before him, solicitous curiosity in her eyes. "I just... wandered away from the crowd for a moment. I'm afraid I haven't been too sociable tonight..."

His voice sounded hoarse in his own ears. He stopped abruptly – and Mara Eikener's gaze flickered upward, toward the top of the stairs. Her smile did not falter, but Crawford saw tension enter her frame.

_She knows._

No more doubt there. The boy was too old to be her son; a brother, perhaps? Crawford could not make out a resemblance. _She'll speak to him. Perhaps now, in fact—_

The pause was dragging on, unspoken admissions in its wake. He forced a smile to match hers.

"I'd best be getting back, then," he said.

He slipped past her through the door; she stood quite unmoving. Crawford saw without turning his head that the smile had died – would die – from her face, and her hands clench on the fabric of her skirt. It would be a minute or two more before her head would come up, and the train of her gown would sursurrate over the carpet as she started up the stairs.

_Tomorrow morning,_ he thought. There was still his cover at the Embassy to consider tonight. And of what could she suspect him? Doomed as she was – it would not be long, he knew vaguely – what could she do?

_Tomorrow._

* * *

_The view pulls back. The man is not very old; nearing forty perhaps. He has a thin, dour face, and fine lines mesh the skin around his mouth from dragging on tens of thousands of cigarettes. The latest cancer stick in the continuing series is propped on the side of a ceramic ashtray before him, the filtered end resting on the tabletop and the other sending loops of heavy smoke into the air. He raises an eyebrow at Crawford._

_"And your actions then?"_

_"I returned there the next morning." He has a headache, an unusual occurrence. A psychic attack? But his shields are solid. He represses the urge to glance into the corner of the room. "At the time my rank did not extend to having a team on standby, so I took all the measures available to me. I knew the Organization would wish to have the boy taken into custody for observation."_

_"But you were alone."_

_"Yes." _

_"And?"_

_"They were gone. The house was empty, and further investigation proved them financially untraceable. There were no clues in the building regarding their destination. It seemed to me as if they'd walked out on the spur of the moment and never returned." _

_"I see. Were they warned, do you believe?"_

_"No." It may be the fault of the smoke; he has left his own pack behind somewhere, and the scent of his debriefer's cheaper brand provokes in him an unsettling combination of nausea and craving. At the look on the man's face he adds, "I stated in my report at the time that they had been, but my understanding now is that I... underestimated the Eikener woman's knowledge of the Organization. It is obvious from the subject's own accounts that she had prepared extensively for such a contingency, although I believe he was kept ignorant of the bulk of her information." _

_"Indeed." The man makes a notation on the sheet in front of him – is it a facsimile of Crawford's 1988 report, or is it the original? He cannot tell – and lays it aside. "But we shall never know for sure, shall we." He picks up the cigarette between the knuckles of his index and middle finger and raises it to his lips._

_"No." Decidedly it is the smoke. Perhaps he should quit; it is too much of a distraction this way. He has never realized. _

_But then, only in the absence of supply is addiction ever apparent._

_The man exhales a blue cloud. "And your next encounter with the subject?"_

_"Two months ago. In Amsterdam."_


	2. Chapter 2

**The Berchtesgaden Debriefing – Chapter 2**

"You waiting for someone, mister?"

Crawford looked up from the Times' financial section he had folded and laid on the bar between his glass and the ashtray. The glass was more water now than either bourbon or ice (he had tried to make it last, so as not to have to drink more than was necessary); the ashtray was nearly filled. He had another half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. At first he had checked every ten minutes, and then every five, but the paths of his immediate future bore a bland resemblance to his present. This bar; this bartender.

No contact.

"Not particularly," he said.

The barman glanced him up and down, taking in the tailored suit and the Burberry he'd folded over the top of the next barstool with something approaching skepticism in his expression. "Haven't seen you around here much."

"I'm in town on business."

The man grunted, returning to his meticulous polishing of mugs and stemware. He was a hulking man, with skin the colour of French-roast coffee; Crawford suspected he served partly as security. Perhaps the place needed it on busy nights. Tonight in particular it was nearly deserted, except for Crawford himself and a trio of scruffy kids sporting studded leather and black/orange/piss yellow hair. They'd given him a cursory, contemptuous once-over when he'd walked in, and now ignored him entirely, lounging with pool cues in hand around the farthest of the three tables pushed up against the opposite wall. Every once in a while – as if a passing remark in their deliberations had served to remind them of a particularly noisome duty – one of them would take a shot, sending one coloured ball after another ricocheting into the corner pockets with tedious accuracy. The clatter punctuated the auditory background provided by a tinny radio behind the bar, tuned to a French oldies AM station with the volume down low. Incongruous music.

"You American?" the man said after a moment. Crawford looked up again.

"Not many people can tell," he said.

The barman only grinned, as if Crawford's words had been a particularly pleasing confirmation. "Ten years across the pond for me," he said. "Cincinnati – and not Indian Hills, either. You?"

Crawford took a sip from his glass, for the form. "New England. We moved around." It was close enough to the truth: _he_ had been moved around. A house in Boston, a summer place in Martha's Vineyard, a boarding school in New Hampshire... Memory, well-trained, ventured no further back.

_Ten years sounds about right._

"You look as though you're at a crossroads, young man."

The accent was heavy, East European. Crawford turned quickly. The woman who had nudged onto the stool diagonally across the bar from him was a conservative thirty years too old to be cohabiting a drinking establishment with the pool-table punks. She wore several layers of cardigans and shawls over a shapeless, sombrely patterned dress; Crawford saw that she was small-boned beneath, but the overall effect was of a bulky, poorly made-up bundle. Her hair was grey, and wound back into a slipping semblance of a bun. _Make that forty years._

She was gazing at him with rheumy blue eyes, apparently expecting an answer.

Crawford exhaled softly. Just what he needed. "Every moment of every day is a crossroads, madam."

"Ah, but your life is on the verge of changing greatly. Peter!" The old woman gestured at the barman imperiously. Crawford made a half-irritated, half-disbelieving sound, but she raised her voice to override him. "I will show you, yes? I will show you."

She slammed the flat of her palm down on the bar between them. Crawford did not jump, but his breath caught when the age-spotted hand lifted and he saw what had been underneath: a tattered deck of playing cards, face downward, the design on the back unremarkable. Not tarot, at least. He averted his eyes quickly, irritation rising like a groundswell.

_Just_ what he needed.

The barman set a tumbler in front of the old woman, ice clinking in what could have been vodka or gin or even water, although the latter was unlikely. She reached for it and gulped down two-thirds of the contents at a go, but her gaze stayed on Crawford.

"Cut the deck," she said.

"I'm sorry," said Crawford, straining for politeness. If he allowed himself the knowledge, he would see the position of each card; what each would be, rather, if he reached for it. And following upon that the old woman's words, and then the choice of yet other cards, one by one the swiftly diminishing combinations radiating like forked lightning into a protean infinity of multiplying universes... his talent stirred in the back of his mind, threatening to become a thought-obliterating roar. "I'm not fond of... predictions."

"Come, come, young man. You must be curious; all men are. Here, just pick one." Her hands moved deftly, shuffling the deck. Crawford wrenched his gaze away, but he could still hear the distinctive silkrain sound of well-worn cards rubbing against each other, and he had to grit his teeth against the urge to make a scene. He had a tight enough leash on his visions now, but it would mean a headache later on.

Surely there was some—

The bartender made a sound of fond exasperation. "Goddamn, Baba, you know the house rules. No hustling in here, all right? I let you, I gotta let everyone." Baba tossed down the dregs of her drink and nudged the tumbler forward with one wizened finger.

"Shut your mouth, young man," she said without rancour. "I'm not one of Ritter's fools."

"Yeah?" The man caught the glass from her, dumped the ice into the sink and reached for the dispenser nozzle. "Ritter's dead, Baba, I ain't worried about Ritter _or_ his goon parade. It's your baby boy plying his trade as can bring down the tone of this joint."

"He pays his tab."

"He pays yours, Baba, and I swear to God that's what keeps the both of you welcome. One of Old Man Flores'," he added in Crawford's direction, as if that said it all. Crawford set his cigarette down.

"The baby boy?"

The bartender snorted. "His _name,_" he said gnomically, "is Schuldich. So he says, anyway. Jesus, Baba, are you going to put it away or not?" Baba muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary, but made the card deck disappear within her shawls. She took a slow swig from her refilled glass: Crawford could see the last drink working in her like a tangible warmth.

"I'm not sure I understand," he said. That got him a sour look.

"Just our little local fixer-upper is all. You got a hankering, that is, he'll fix you up – street price per gram or hour. I hear there's a preferred customer discount. The regular pretty poison."

"A hustler," Crawford translated. The bartender grunted.

"Trouble with a fake ID," he said. "Don't know what those kinds see in him, but I've had guys going batshit insane in here, and that's with him sitting there not even _doing_ anything. I swear to God if it weren't for Flores—"

"Shut _up,_" Baba said too loudly, cutting him off. "Shut your goddamned mouth. You don't know a thing—" She went into a fit of coughing, doubling over her lap. The pool-table punks glanced over at the noise and back again, dismissive.

"Not on the floor, Baba," the bartender warned. "Or you're not getting another. Christ, will you _look_ at this joint?" Crawford concentrated on folding his paper carefully.

"Does he come in here often? This Schuldich boy."

"You seem pretty interested, mister." Crawford shrugged, expressionless, and after a moment the bartender did too: a ponderous shifting of stance as if casting off a weight.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I guess he does. If you—" he broke off. "Shit. Speak of the devil and he shows his horns."

Crawford followed his gaze. A boy – not much more than mid-teens – had just pushed through the door of the bar, and was making his way toward them with a smile on his face. He was slender, dressed simply in a black, long-sleeved shirt and black jeans; he looked nothing like what the bartender had implied. Red hair cascaded over his shoulders, glowing in the dimly electric light. A couple of the punks lifted their heads to watch him pass, their conversation dying with the clank and rumble of their game. The room was suddenly very quiet.

He was halfway across the floor before recognition hit Crawford, accompanied by an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.

_Danger._

He brought up his mental shields, wary, but no more precise vision came. Schuldich did not even glance his way as he slid onto a stool between him and Baba. The bartender tilted his head questioningly, but the boy shook his head.

"Not tonight, Pete. I'm just dropping by... Hello, darling," and he threw a careless arm about the old woman's shoulders, dropping a kiss on her cheek. She swatted at him irritably, muttering, but her watery eyes were dull and tender with the alcohol. Schuldich smiled at her and propped his elbows on the bar. One of the punks wandered up and asked the bartender for a refill, and the man turned away to draft another pitcher.

It was only then that Schuldich shifted, pinning him with eyes of a well-remembered feline green, and Crawford realized he'd been staring.

"You must be visiting," he said. "Like Amsterdam? Have you been down to the harbour yet?"

"Only once, a long time ago," Crawford answered without missing a beat. The exchange sounded natural: his talent had warned him before the code phrase actually fell from Schuldich's lips, time enough to hide surprise. But his mind was racing. It could not be coincidence. After all this time (memory rose of a sudden, insistent – warm unexpected lips)-

What was he doing here?

"Then you have to," Schuldich said. "The sunsets are beautiful. Lovely colours."

"You know each other?" asked the bartender.

"We've met," Crawford said. "Briefly."

"I'm afraid you've made a mistake," Schuldich said.

/Munich/ Crawford thought at him deliberately. /_Fräulein_ Eikener's soirée three years ago. You tried to sit in my lap while I was standing./

Schuldich shrugged, not quite looking at him. "I could have forgotten," he added.

There was a brief silence. Crawford drew on his cigarette, trying to think. He was expecting a regular, but if he'd been ferreted out by Flores-

"Schuldich," he said eventually. Schuldich. _Schuldig._ A German word. Guilty... "First name or last name?"

Schuldich laughed. "Have you been talking about me, Baba?" But Baba was huddled over her drink, no longer responsive. Schuldich glanced up at the bartender, who held up three fingers and shook his head. "It's _a_ name, _Herr-_ Crawford, isn't it? First name or last name?" Before Crawford could answer he reached over and plucked a cigarette from Crawford's half empty pack. "Pass me a light?"

Crawford reached for his lighter automatically. Schuldich smiled a little wider around the filter, leant over the corner of the bar and touched the unlit end of the cigarette to Crawford's own. He inhaled and it caught, glowing cherry red for a moment before Schuldich leant back again and blew out the smoke.

"Thanks," he said. The bartender made a soft, disparaging sound between his teeth, but Crawford ignored him. Schuldich's hair had brushed against his cheek in passing, and the afterimage of the half-imagined contact tingled on his skin. He was suddenly certain there would not be another informant tonight.

Pretty poison indeed.

"Can we talk here?" he asked, for the form. Schuldich gave him a look that struck him as indulgent.

"Sure," he said. "Sure, if you want to, _Herr_ Crawford. Or we could—" he made a vague gesture- "take a walk."

Crawford could sense the bartender's attentiveness beneath his apparent disinterest. He did not rise to the challenge. Let the man assume: Crawford would not lose such a find again. His heartbeat quickened with an unaccustomed anticipation.

"A walk, then," he said.

Schuldich smiled.

Baba never looked up as they left.

* * *

_Smoke rises languidly from the smoldering butts in the ashtray. The man flips through the stapled document, moistening the tip of his finger at every third page. Forward, forward, back. "The subject," he says finally. "Did the two of you engage in sexual relations?"_

_His voice is dispassionate. Crawford closes his eyes for the check, reflexive by now. The man floats behind his eyelids in a full-color stereogrammatic approximation of reality, hijacked from the room by a helpfully photographic visual memory. He has stopped shuffling through the report, and is watching Crawford with a certain bored professional alertness. Crawford reopens his eyes. _

_The man is flipping through the stapled document. Smoke rises, languid, from the ashtray beside him._

_The woman leaning against the file cabinets in the corner turns her head, glancing from one of them to the other. Crawford betrays no reaction. They would have shielded the house, but that would only amplify the psi energy inside. Perhaps that was the intended effect. The woman's sober pantsuit bespeaks an Institut empath, a progressive-model, dark-eyed lie detector._

_He cannot stop the visions yet._

_The Institut scientists considered them useless: hallucinations his mind induces upon itself as sensorial packaging for the extrasensory information it is unequipped to process. They weigh dead on his reaction time. Much more efficient if he can accept the knowledge for what it is, so Crawford trains toward their elimination. He knows one day the future will only have to whisper, mystery-less in the intimate space between action and reaction, and he will understand. _

_And surely he is strong enough for the inevitable madness, if even Schuldich could—_

_"The subject," the man says, looking up. "Did the two of you engage in sexual relations?"_

* * *

"The light switch is beside you," Schuldich said, not turning. "You want a drink?"

Crawford's questing fingers met string. He pulled, hearing the click somewhere over his head, and with a warning flicker a fluorescent tube mounted on the wall sprang to life, filling the room with its subdued electric hum. In the abrupt illumination the red of Schuldich's hair showed cruelly over-bright. "No," he said.

"Good. 'Cause I haven't got anything." Schuldich shrugged, rotating the movement into a lazy stretch. Crawford glanced away. Schuldich had a sofa bed, the cheap type that was mostly a folding foam mattress, and no other furniture he could see. A pair of wicker chests gathered shadows in the corner. The walls were bare, painted in a periwinkle-blue dulled by dirt and beige splotches of wallpaper glue. Rust streaked the space under the boarded-up window. He took a step forward and felt something crunch under his shoe. There was water damage all along the ceiling molding, darkening with mildew where the plaster had bubbled up behind. An old poster decorated the opposite wall; Robert Plant gazed out at him with greasy-ink flyer eyes, the turn of his mouth gnomic. What was "Stairway to Heaven" in German?

"Literally?" Schuldich said. He smiled over his shoulder as Crawford centered himself and strengthened his shields. "There's all kinds of heaven, _Herr_ Crawford. You think this is a dive, don't you?"

Crawford was silent a moment. "Why did you bring me here?"

"'Cause it's quiet." Schuldich sat on the edge of the mattress, too-long teenager legs stretched haphazardly before him. "This building's marked for demolition. Water in the foundations – could go any minute. Even squatters leave it alone. There's nobody in any of the apartments except us." He grinned, a flash of pearly white teeth. "All by our lonesome."

"You have electricity."

"I run it in from the main line. I know how."

"I would've thought you'd know better."

He was standing over the boy, overshadowing him without quite knowing how he'd gotten there. Schuldich tilted his head up and gave him a slow smirk. Very deliberately he let himself fall back onto the mattress.

"Maybe I do," he said. "Maybe, you know, hell is other people for me. Maybe I like my beauty sleep, or maybe I'm so loud at night I get my ass evicted all the time. How would you know?" He arched his back a little to emphasize the question.

Crawford could see the taut hardness of his nipples under the thin fabric of his shirt. He knelt, straddling Schuldich's hips, and braced his hands beside his shoulders so he could look into his face.

"I want to know who sent you," he said. "Where's Mara?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You do. And I think you'd be best advised to tell me."

Schuldich looked at him, his lashes lowered. "You talk too much," he said. His red hair was a halo against the mattress's fabric cover, filling Crawford's peripheral vision.

Perhaps it was the unaccustomed effort of the mental shielding, but he had one of those rare moments when the knowledge simply came. No visions, no packaging. He held back the unbidden smile and bent his head, bringing his lips to within an inch of Schuldich's. The boy was quiet at this, watchful; Crawford could feel his respiration stir evenly against his skin. He thought if he listened hard enough, he could hear Schuldich's heartbeat.

"Do I?" he whispered, the words melding into the moist warmth of Schuldich's breath. "I don't believe I've ever been told that." And before Schuldich could answer, he lowered his head a little further and completed the incipient caress.

Schuldich's green eyes slid closed; the subtle watchfulness in his body lasted only a moment longer before it, too, was let go. His lips parted under Crawford's in perfectly timed willingness, with a shy flicker of tongue against the invasion. The calculated artlessness of it all sparked amusement and sent heat shivering down Crawford's spine. He deepened the kiss aggressively; one of his hands slid upward and down, trailing across Schuldich's collarbone and throat before catching at the button at his collar.

There was, for those mindful of detail, a satisfaction to be derived from navigating small intricacies sans flaw or hesitation: unhooking a brassiere without looking, or undoing a shirt one-handed. Crawford was nothing if not a meticulous man.

Schuldich murmured something indistinguishable as Crawford's hands travelled over his skin, the tone of his voice lazy and warm. He shifted under Crawford accomodatingly, winding an arm about the other man's neck to draw him down. Crawford's hips pressed against the denim-clad warmth of Schuldich's inner thigh, and he almost closed his eyes. Skillful. Too skillful, and the balance was becoming increasingly difficult to strike.

_Permission,_ he told himself, thought of nothing but desire, and let his wards fall.

Schuldich inhaled sharply.

Crawford cut off the incipient moan with another lip-bruising kiss, tasting the unspoken satisfaction – _my game now and you want me,_ came the thought – his hand trailing down Schuldich's belly to dip beneath the waist of his low-slung jeans. Two top buttons, neither particularly recalcitrant, a question of a zipper. Schuldich shivered, bucking against his touch. Crawford stroked his erection roughly under the denim, broke the kiss at Schuldich's gasp to nip hard at his throat. _My game._ He thought he wanted to see Schuldich plead. But the familiar feel of certainty had taken the place of instinct, the next vision flaring behind his eyes—

—the smoke-and-alcohol flavor of the boy a mere foretaste of danger—

He caught Schuldich's wrist before the barrel of the gun quite touched his temple, in a trained grip that numbed nerves.

For a moment they stared into each other's eyes. Crawford sensed the impending struggle and reacted, pinning Schuldich's other arm to the mattress with all his weight behind it. It should have been painful. Schuldich evinced no sign. He was flushed and breathing hard, a tiny smile fixed on his lips; the gaze he turned up toward the older man was not quite focussed.

"All right," Crawford said softly, "I'll try again. Who sent you? Because if it was Flores, you must have impressed him."

Schuldich laughed. The sound was drunken, and oddly mirthless.

"Fuck you," he said, slurring slightly.

"Thank you, but no." He watched Schuldich's eyes; the colour of them had deepened, he noted. The pupils were dilated as well. He hadn't drunk back at the bar. Some sort of coated pill... he'd wanted to be clear-minded for the pick-up. Crawford wondered briefly if Schuldich had caught the flash of precognition in his mind, and if so, whether he'd understood what it was. "You know a man named Hans Ritter, Schuldich?"

"He's dead."

"So I hear. I hear he had a pretty extensive business too, here in Amsterdam, and by a puzzling coincidence most of the top people in it are dead too. People in Amsterdam, London, Sofia..." He tightened his fingers on Schuldich's wrist. "Tell me. Is Juan Saavedra Flores a smart man?"

Schuldich was silent.

"I think he must be. I think he must have known there were important, _higher_ interests that would be perturbed by the disintegration of Ritter's organization. People who don't care which middleman they deal with per se, but who don't like it when things don't go their way. People who take measures." He twisted his grip, trying to make Schuldich drop the gun, and met more resistance than should have been possible under chemical influence. "I think that if he's rocking the boat after so long, it's because someone out there convinced him he was safe. I'd very much like to know who that someone was. Do you understand what I'm saying, or is it all becoming a blur?"

Schuldich's eyes narrowed, and then he smiled. Crawford only had the barest sliver of warning before the psychic attack slammed into his shields. It was enough – there was no more finesse to that screaming red power than there had been the last time – but the raw strength of it made the room spin. He fought it back and heard Schuldich give a short scream of frustration. He was clutching Schuldich's wrist hard enough to bruise, but the boy would not give.

_Beautiful,_ something in him whispered, _beautiful—_

"Our current—" he said, and had to pause for breath. "Our current circumstances are not beyond negotiation, Schuldich. I would double Flores' terms for your information—"

"I don't have any fucking information—"

"-but quality merchandise isn't my forte. Though I suppose any central nervous system depressant would take the edge off." Drink would, if he drank enough. Seconal, or heroin... "Does the noise keeps you awake otherwise? You can't block it out, can you?"

Schuldich made a sound that was half hiss and half snarl. Crawford felt the sudden desperate tension in his arm and threw his weight against it, swinging the gun's muzzle up just as it went off with a deafening bang. The recoil jolted it out of Schuldich's hand; there was a crash, and the room was plunged into sudden darkness.

Schuldich was fighting him, rolling and kicking out. Crawford tangled his legs in his own, using gravity again to his advantage. Before Schuldich could try for another swing he twisted his arms around and behind his back. A judicious wrench, and Schuldich let his head fall back against the mattress, panting hard.

Electricity arced fitfully in the broken fluorescent tube somewhere behind Crawford's back, casting blue shadows. He thought he heard glass tinkling still – the ringing in his ears? He bent until his lips were hovering by Schuldich's ear, and he could sense the warmth emanating from the boy's skin. He smelled of cinnamon and almonds, and some buried part of Crawford's mind whispered that the scent had not changed from years before.

"Would you like to learn how?" he murmured.

Schuldich went still.

A flash of forward vision assured Crawford the immediate danger was past. He gave it a second or two more, then relaxed his grip, sitting up and retrieving Schuldich's Saturday night special in the same motion. It was a small-gauge Sig-Sauer, surprisingly well-balanced in the hand. He wondered how well the boy could shoot when not at point blank range. But then, so many skills necessitated only training and discipline. From the Organization's point of view, it was the talent requirements that made difficulties...

A small sound made him turn as he was smoothing his shirt and jacket. Schuldich had rolled over and was sprawled bonelessly supine on the mattress, watching him.

"There's a cleanup team outside," he said finally. Crawford raised an eyebrow.

"How many?"

Schuldich's gaze went distant, and remained there. "Three." Crawford nodded, dropping the clip out of the Sig-Sauer briefly to check the number of remaining rounds. He could see the first one in his mind, a target unaware as he would step around the corner, raise his arm—

"It won't be a problem," he said.

Schuldich gave the same odd little laugh. Crawford felt his gaze on his back, but paid it no attention. The Sig-Sauer went in the shoulder holster and his own Walther P5 stayed out. He reached for the door handle.

"You're SS, aren't you." The words made him pause and turn, but Schuldich didn't seem inclined to follow up with further accusations. He had propped himself up into a sitting position, the dark shirt pooled at his elbows. He was staring at the broken lighting fixture as if calculating how much it would cost to have it replaced. Crawford felt a smile catch at the corners of his lips.

"Does it matter?"

Schuldich turned his head slowly, and Crawford went still. There was drugged heat in Schuldich's leaf-shadowed eyes, and something beneath that as well; something feral. Crawford thought of starved wild creatures, and of food left in obvious traps.

"No," said Schuldich. "No, it doesn't."


	3. Chapter 3

**The Berchtesgaden Debriefing – Chapter 3**

_Crawford closes his eyes again. Darkness only, this time. _

_"Yes," he answers firmly, and reopens them. He does not add, _must we discuss this,_ though he would like to do so. The spokesman of the Organisation alone determines the necessity of a line of questioning, by definition of the exercise. He assumes in any case that his sentiment has been... identified, and taken into account. His involuntary reactions fall well within the parameters of psychological veracity._

_Anyone may be expected to feel this way, no matter how loyal to his superiors._

_His headache is worsening._

_"Was it in order to...?" The man makes a tiny gesture, fingers uncurling. Crawford pauses, formulates and discards an ending to the sentence. The woman straightens and crosses the room to the man's left. The sound of her sensible heels on the hardwood flooring is oddly muted._

_"To establish an alliance," Crawford says finally. "To... foster a sense of trust. He expected sex to be a motivating factor in my decision-making; I had to be certain of his allegiance. He's not an unattractive boy," he adds, because it seems obscurely necessary that the point be made. _

_Psychological veracity, once again._

_The woman leans down, whispers in the man's ear. Her dark eyes linger on Crawford's face. The man nods._

_"Something else," he says. "You did not report this encounter to Rasmussen. Why?"_

_"Should I have?" No answer. Of course. "I was dispatched to Amsterdam as an independent plenipotentiary agent in order to address a specific issue regarding the Organisation's business interests. It was not an open-ended assignment; the goal was well-defined. Documentation was of secondary importance until said goal was accomplished. And the situation evolved rapidly."_

_"You missed Flores in Amsterdam." _

_"He'd been tipped off by the exposure of my primary contact. By the end of a twenty-four-hour period I'd backtracked up his organisation from the team he'd sent to back up Schuldich. I missed him, yes. He recognised the threat as serious."_

_"So you picked up the trail from a different direction." The man procures another cigarette from somewhere on his person, and lights up. "Curious. Our subject was not a close associate of Juan Flores', in a practical sense. Though of course he is talented."_

_Crawford remains silent._

_"Harold Rasmussen was your recruiting officer, was he not?"_

_"Yes."_

* * *

"He was around," the man said, glancing over at the far side of the bar. Baba was there, Crawford noticed, slumped over the same half-empty tumbler as if she had not so much as shifted position in the interim. Stringy, steel-grey hair tumbled over her face, but she made no move to push it away.

"He left?"

"Put half a grand toward her tab. In greenback." The bartender raised a quizzical eyebrow at him, as if expecting him to claim credit for Schuldich's sudden surge in net worth. But Crawford said nothing, and the man grunted.

"None of my business anyway," he said, reaching into some hidden compartment under the bar. "Here. Said to give you this if you showed."

Crawford took the paper, unfolding it automatically. Baba lifted her head to look at him then, roused by the rustle of paper – and her face was dead. The corneas had gone completely white, bulging with congealed humours; the skin around was mottled and discoloured. The mouth was a blue rictus. With cold, no doubt: how long would she be left to herself before someone bothered to check, curled in her slow blanket of snow with an anonymous lintel in guise of deathbed? Days?

Crawford closed his eyes briefly, reopened them. The old woman drew back from him, muttering, already drunk, her pale blue eyes wet with rheum. He breathed again and returned his gaze to the note. The immediate future shifted with his every motion and decision, but the deaths were final. He knew she had less than a year left. A toss-up which would let her down first, the money from her pawned possessions or her liver – but until then she'd be here in the evenings, no young embrace to warm her shoulders ever again, and the barman would serve. It was his business, after all.

One day, perhaps, in Crawford's own mirror—

"The Dies Irae?"

Crawford nodded shortly. The bartender gave him a once-over with his eyes, face impassible.

"You're not dressed for it," he said.

* * *

He'd untucked his shirt, left his tie folded in his breast pocket. The jacket stayed because he was carrying concealed; it took no special psi ability to know that discovery would not assure his welcome. At least the suit was dark.

Getting in was still a near thing.

Once past the door, though, no one seemed inclined to care how he was dressed. Crawford descended two flights of corrugated-metal stairs into a hell of flashing strobe light and writhing bodies. It was dark, the walls a claustrophobic black interspersed with demonic faces grinning in halftone; the air tasted like sweat and smoke (not all of it cigarettes). The pounding was deafening. It didn't register as music with Crawford, who liked Bach and Shostakovich. _Wailing and drums,_ he thought. _Primitives in the night. Barbarism..._ His vision adjusted with difficulty to make out different areas: raised bar and silver-sprayed tables, battered couches in corners of darkness, gyrating crowd outlined by festoons of wires. He squeezed his way past the drinks line, guided more by flashes of inner vision than anything else.

Schuldich was dancing with a girl, pressed up close with his arms hooked around her waist and her chin on his shoulder – she was a little shorter than him even in heels. From a distance they looked like young animals huddled together for warmth, but the club was sweltering with enclosed human movement, and Schuldich had his fingers under the ragged fringe of her cut-offs, caressing the white flesh at the top of her thighs. Crawford could see through a brief parting of the crowd that her eyes were closed, hot-pink lips half-parted and unsmiling.

/Schuldich/ he thought. Making it a call. /Schuldich—/

Schuldich turned his head to gaze into Crawford's eyes, the girl's pale throat complaisant beneath his lips.

Crawford kept himself still. The girl seemed upset, and inclined to be shrill until Schuldich caught her hand with something crumpled and plastic-wrapped in his own. She quieted then, and did not even glance back at him as she slipped into the darkness beyond the speakers. Halfway across the dance floor a tall blond in a ripped Edvard Munch t-shirt reached out and caught Schuldich around the waist. Schuldich swayed unfazed into the movement, tilting his head up to be kissed. A few words were exchanged after the lip lock, humourous apparently – the other man laughed and released him with a friendly push. And then Schuldich was before him, the same sharp-edged amusement dancing around his lips.

"You wanted to see me?" he mouthed. The words travelled clearly, and Crawford found it difficult to tell if he was using his talent – or if he was simply close enough to hear.

"Cash in advance," he said. "And I'm not even dead."

"So," Schuldich said. The song segued into another – drums less frenetic, more guitar. "Let's call it a tie, then. Do you dance, _Herr_ Crawford?"

"I'd prefer to stick to business."

"Boring. I could teach you." Crawford was accustomed to toff British standards of personal space, upon which Schuldich was now infringing: just a little too close, swaying languidly to the beat. He refused to back up. "You ever loosen up? Or don't they give that class at assassin school?"

"I want to know where Flores is hiding," Crawford said, ignoring him. _You need what I can give you._

"Same to you." Schuldich grinned at Crawford's eloquent pause, a flash of white in the prevailing darkness. "You could find another way at Flores but there's only one me. Correct?"

"What did Mara Eikener tell you?" he said, and only then realized the superfluity of the question. Schuldich laughed outright.

"She never _told_ me anything," he said. "But she knew... just enough..." Crawford opened his mouth to ask the next question, but Schuldich was already there. "She's dead. A traffic accident."

Crawford remembered blood matted in golden hair. "When?"

"About two weeks after I met you." Schuldich did not give any sign that the break from his previous story was of any importance. "Right here in Amsterdam. So I... stuck around."

"What was she to you?" Crawford reached into his jacket pocket for his pack and lighter.

"Sorry?"

"What was she to you. Mother? Sister?" Flick of the lighter. "Guardian? In socio-legal relationship terms."

"What the fuck are you, youth protection services?"

"Just curious."

"She was—" there was one of those jagged shifts in the pounding of the music that Crawford could perceive but not time: a heartbeat of hushed anticipation before the percussion cut in again, and the thundering bass line crashed over them like a mounting wave. Schuldich took a deep breath and tilted his head upward, his eyes sliding closed. He'd never quite stopped swaying in place, and now a smile fluttered on his lips, jarring by its vapidity. Crawford smoked and wondered if the logical end of their conversation was at hand, and peripherally if a Schuldich entirely removed from controlled substances would be easier to deal with. He decided that the opposite was probably true: the higher the better, frankly.

The Organization made certain its operatives stayed clean, unless of course it wished otherwise for them. Failure to obey regulations meant death for the rank-and-file. Properly trained espers were too rare to purge similarly, but the Institute's methods of treatment were... unpleasant.

None of which constituted Crawford's problem.

Schuldich laughed suddenly, slumping forward so that his hair fell into his face. "My aunt," he said. "I think, anyway. I – oh, shit." And he started laughing again. Crawford took another long drag on his filter, experiencing the mint-tinged acridity of the smoke as a balm.

"You stuck around," he said. "Squatting in a building that should have been razed two city administrations ago, fucking yourself up with the same illegal substances you re-sell in your moments of lucidity, luring men to keep the pudgy smile on a small-fry Dutch importer's face. Do you know why street rats are street rats, Schuldich? Because they can't _cope._ Psychological issues. Story of a lost generation."

He dropped the stub of his cigarette on the floor, grinding it undershoe.

"You're _really_ boring me," Schuldich said through his smile. His eyes were flat. "I won't let SS touch me, _Herr_ Crawford."

"SS doesn't have to know about it."

"I don't believe you."

"Who's running Flores?"

"I haven't a clue."

"Where is he?"

Schuldich shook his head from side to side. His smile turned mocking.

Crawford grabbed him by the arm roughly and dragged him forward. Two steps and they were in a dark corner; he shoved Schuldich up against the wall, his forearm across the boy's throat. Pinned his lower body with his own. Schuldich stopped struggling almost immediately, watching him warily.

"So why are you still talking to me, Schuldich?" Same pair of jeans he was wearing, it looked like. Crawford undid the buttons with his free hand. The boy was _hard,_ his cock throbbing with heat under Crawford's rough fumbling. "Is this what you want?"

"You have no fucking idea," said Schuldich, "of what I want. You—" Crawford tightened his fingers a fraction and Schuldich's words died in a gasp of air. His eyes closed as he melted into Crawford's touch, his head lolling back against the wall.

All this could well be an act, but Crawford found that he did not care. He quickened the rhythm of his stroking, pressing up close to Schuldich and feeling him quiver. The air was torrid of a sudden – stifling – but Schuldich's hands had come up and fastened on the lapels of his suit jacket, crumpling the fabric, and he couldn't shrug it off. The boy's lips were parted, his breath coming in short pants. Sweat moistened his temples, darkening strands of red and making them cling. Crawford bent his head to lick at the skin there, tasting salt. Schuldich moaned and turned his head, but it was a gesture of abandon and not refusal. His hips were bucking against the steady caress, and the pressure holding him fast.

It was a matter of seconds before he made a stifled sound – and Crawford felt wet warmth flood into his palm. He reached to the side, not looking, and wiped it off against the fake leopard's-fur covering of one of the high barstools.

Schuldich was gazing up at him, his eyes green slits of satiation. Crawford held him up against the wall and kissed him hard. Schuldich responded readily, catching at Crawford's lower lip with playful teeth. He tasted like alcohol.

"You're going to have to pay for that," he whispered when Crawford lifted his head for air. Crawford gave a bark of not-quite laughter.

"Drop the act," he said. "That's not what you do. You let them think what they want, it's convenient for you."

"You don't get what I'm saying," said Schuldich. He reached up and pushed Crawford's glasses up with one finger – they had slid down – and then he brushed the same finger across the lens, and Crawford realised the glass was blurry with moisture. "But you will. _Herr_ Crawford."

He barely needed the vision this time: he brought his hand down just as Schuldich's was curving around the grip of the Walther in his holster.

"Show me where Flores is," he said.

After a moment Schuldich grinned again. He let his head fall forward against Crawford's shoulder.

"Do you have a car?" he murmured.

* * *

_"He had papers?"_

_"He did." The man raises an eyebrow at him and makes an annotation on his notepad. "Konrad Sachs-Weber, born in Bonn, naturalized Dutch citizen. Quite a competent forgery. I had him issued others when we crossed the Channel, of course."_

_"Of course."_


End file.
